Essay: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Marriage in the 1900s was not the amiable and love-centered experience it is now associated with today. Many marriages were arranged to improve or maintain social status, or tie influential families together, but people rarely married simply for love. Some women were merely looked upon as baby machines. Within a marriage in the late 1800s and early 1900s, husbands still dominated family hierarchy. They usually carried the responsibility of the breadwinner of the household and with that came the entitlement to complete rule in the home. Women were expected to be dependent and domestic, without an opposing opinion on any subject her husband might suggest. Zora Neale Hurston grew up in this particular social situation, and used her influences from her hometown of Eatonville, in the early 20th Century, to frame the setting in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Janie’s first marriage, to Logan Killicks, is one she is pressured into by her Grandmother, but mostly due to his behavior, it doesn’t last long. She runs away from that marriage with Joe Starks, whose high ambitions and assertive attitude lead him to become the mayor of Eatonville. However, that marriage quickly heads south, and by the time Joe is dying, there is no love left. After Janie has been a widow for a few months, Mr. Vergible Woods, also known as Tea Cake, comes along to entice Janie’s heart and steal her away from the life she has known for the past thirty-plus years. Although these are the prominent marriages in the book, there are a few glimpses into other female characters’ marriages such as Janie’s Grandmothers’or rather the lack thereof and her friend Phoebe. Issues concerning gender roles and inequality of the sexes are present throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God, but it is the married women that are affected the most by the oppressiveness of men of the early 1900s.
Janie’s marriage to Logan Killicks, although short-lived, serves as an example of the complications of marriage. Logan suffers from many defaults to the point that no positive aspects of his attitude are offered to the reader. Janie’s marriage to Logan ultimately fails because of Logan’s lack of ability to express his emotions; he relies solely on wanting Janie to know what he feels without him having to vocalize his needs. This air of meekness has only been labeled a good quality when it comes to women because men prefer them not challenging their authority. Another severe issue that Logan experiences is inadequate sexual prowess which increases the fragility of his masculinity. Carol Batker addresses this issue of sexuality in her essay, “‘Love Me like I like to Be’: the Sexual Politics of Hurston’s ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God,’ the Classic Blues and the Black Women’s Club Movement.” Batker provides the argument that Janie’s sexual desire is suppressed by her middle-class marriages, with Killicks and Starks, in the end, naming explicitly that they are inadequate. Logan Killicks, who is Janie’s first attempt at marriage, is characterized for the reader to assume he’s impotent, and therefore to assert his masculinity, uses his material possessions of land and a house to prove he has power (Batker). Logan uses his possessions to convince Janie that she cannot survive without them, and thus, without him. However, this plan backfires as Logan treats Janie like a slave to the land and burdens her with all the housework and some farm work. In this treatment, Janie becomes dissatisfied, and when the opportunity for ‘better care’ comes along in the form of Joe Starks, she takes it.
Janie’s longest, and arguably her hardest marriage, is to Joe “Jody” Starks; due to his overwhelming control issues and fragile masculinity. Even the alleged positive aspects of this marriage reveal women’s helplessness during the time period. One such example is when Starks hears about Janie’s concern for an ill-treated mule, so he buys it to let it rest. Janie is overjoyed with his decision and compares Joe and his freeing of the mule from labor to “Abraham Lincoln, he had de whole United States tuh rule so he freed de Negroes” (Hurston 58). This moment in Janie and Starks’ marriage still exemplifies how women lack power, as Janie isn’t able to save the mule herself, instead she had to rely on her husband to do so. In Janie’s marriage to Joe Starks, it seems as if Janie’s only purpose is to serve as an embellishment on her husband’s status. This sentiment is reflected in the male majority, many of whom struggle with fragile masculinity. In the book “The inside Light”: New Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston, Kersuze Simeon-Jones’ critical essay titled “Masculinity in Hurston’s Texts”, Joe Starks is labeled another classic case. Simeon-Jones discusses a scene in Their Eyes Were Watching God where Joe Starks is told by male townsfolk of Eatonville that his wife, Janie, is a great orator, and instead of taking it as a compliment, he believes it is an insult to his manhood. His wife being able to speak publicly means Joe has not been successful in keeping her subdued and beneath him at all times. He fully believes with his heart and soul that “As a man thus conceived, Joe assumes the responsibility of maintaining a social order that perpetuates male dominance and female subjugation – economically, socially, politically, physically, emotionally, and psychologically” (Masculinity in Hurston’s Texts). This was an extremely horrible but widely shared view. Women in the early 1900s were barely allowed any civil liberties, and in accordance with this, toxic masculinity became a smothering force in marriages.
On top of the toxic masculinity, Joe Starks character is marred by his controlling nature. Within Janie’s marriage to Joe, “Time came when she fought back with her tongue as best she could, but it didn’t do her any good. It just made Joe do more. He wanted her submission and he’d keep on fighting until he had it” (Hurston 71). This wasn’t uncommon for the time, but because the reader sees the story through Janie’s life, the reader does not get other examples of how submission was the most important aspect of a good marriage, from the view of the husband. The idea was prolonged through the years, how one of a woman’s only weapons were her words but in the face of male ignorance to the limitations placed on the female gender, a woman would be powerless. Men took it, as Joe did, as a challenge to their authority, and usually responded with expressions of dominance in the form of physical abuse. Most of the abuse Janie faces in her marriage to Joe is less physical but just as cruel, and from Joe’s assumptions of women, he places her only in domestic situations. His reasoning for this is due to her supposed lack of intelligence; and Janie is aware of this and hates Joe for it. By the end of their marriage, Janie is over-irritated with Joe’s treatment of her and uses her last moments with him to put him in his place over all the trouble he has caused her. Janie’s marriage to Joe sets the standards she looks for when entering into marriage with Tea Cake, that is, they are the complete opposite of what Joe was in every aspect.